Colin Kroll, 34, was found face down in one of the two bedrooms in his Soho apartment on Sunday
The HQ Trivia founder found dead in his Manhattan apartment from a reported heroin and drug overdose this weekend had been battling accusations of inappropriate professional behavior and was relying on a not-yet-launched product to carry his app amid dwindling audience numbers.
Colin Kroll, 34, was found face down in one of the two bedrooms in his Soho apartment on Sunday.
Police were called to the $7,450-a-month apartment by an unidentified woman who said she was worried that she had not heard from Kroll. He had been living in the apartment since 2016.
Heroin and cocaine were reportedly found at the scene but his official cause of death has not yet been determined by the medical examiner.
Despite the astronomical early success of HQ, the game-show style app he released with Rus Yusupov in 2016, Kroll's professional life had taken a downward turn in the last four years and the app's future was precarious.
At the start of the year, HQ had was ubiquitous among millenials. It was comfortably among the top 10 most downloaded apps on iTunes but had slid down to between number 250 and 500 in recent weeks.
At its peak, two million people tuned in to play the game twice-a-day. That number shrunk dramatically towards the end of the year to the low hundreds of thousands.
Privately, Kroll and Yusupov had pinned their hopes on a new product - HQ Words. It would take the form of a live, smartphone version of Wheel of Fortune which founders hoped would deliver a one-two punch and reel players back in.
HQ Words was to be released in October this year but the launch was delayed. Intermedia Labs, the company which owns HQ Trivia, did not immediately answer questions about the delay on Monday morning.
Kroll was found face down in one of the two bedrooms inside his Soho apartment (shown above) on Sunday after a concerned woman called 911 to say she had not heard from him
The tech entrepreneur had been living in the $7,450-a-month, two-bedroom apartment since 2016. It is pictured
Intermedia Labs won funding in March this year after Kroll, who previously worked for Yahoo and Jetsetter, apologized for inappropriate work behavior which had cost them previous investment.
In December last year, Kroll's management style was described as 'egregious', 'abusive', 'aggressive' and 'abrasive' by Twitter and Vine sources in a Recode report about HQ's failed attempts to raise funds.
At the time, the company was looking for investment from three prominent venture capitalists but they all pulled out after discovering the complaints against him while performing due diligence.
At Vine, Kroll was repeatedly described as 'creepy' towards women and was generally unpopular.
Intermedia Labs carried out an internal investigation as more investors pulled out but found nothing that warranted Kroll being removed.
'I found a good deal of negative sentiment about Colin and the Vine team and some discomfort with his behavior, but I did not find evidence that warrants his removal from the company,' Jeremy Liew, a board member of Intermedia Labs, said at the time.
Kroll declined to comment at the time.
In March this year, the company was given investment after Kroll apologized publicly.
Kroll was under pressure to deliver a new game as HQ Trivia, the wildly successful game-show app he released in 2016, continued to lose its audience
'I now realize that there are things I said and did that made some feel unappreciated or uncomfortable. I apologize to those people.
'Today, I’m committed to building HQ Trivia into a culture-defining product and supporting the dedicated team that makes it all possible,' he said.
The March round valued HQ Trivia at $100million. While a victory for the founders, it placed new pressure on them to deliver a return.
In August, Kroll replaced Yusupov as CEO, despite an HQ employee filing a formal complaint alleging that Kroll's management style was 'aggressive'.
Again, the company said it carried out its own investigation into the claims but found they carried no merit.
Kroll was fired by Twitter in 2014, two years after it acquired Vine, the popular video platform he and Yusupov created with Dom Hoffman years earlier. Twitter shuttered Vine in 2016, four years after buying it for a reported $30million.
In August this year, Kroll replaced Rus Yusupov as the CEO of Intermedia Labs, the company which owns HQ Trivia. It came after he apologized for 'creepy' and 'inappropriate' behavior which cost the pair investment last December. They are shown in 2014, two years after they sold their video company Vine to Twitter for $30million
By then, Kroll was long gone from the company but the decision to close it left a sour taste in the founders' mouths.
Yusapov tweeted afterwards that he regretted the sale, writing: 'Don't sell your company!'
Among the reasons Vine was closed was its struggle to compete with Instagram.
When Twitter bought Vine, Instagram had not yet introduced video to its platform. When it did, it ate away at Vine's uniqueness. Twitter also laid off nine percent of its workforce around the same time.
Kroll's father has revealed that he had recently quit drinking and was struggling to keep up with the pace of New York City
Kroll's father Alan told The New York Times that he was troubled by the allegations and that here had a hard time accepting if people could not operate at his flat-out pace.
'He couldn’t understand people that couldn’t keep up.
'I tried to explain to him that not everyone could do that,' he said, adding that his son had a 'tough Mid-West drive' having grown up in Detroit.
Alan added that he had been working 'too many hours' and was struggling to keep up with life in New York City.
'He worked too many hours and too hard. I think New York City got to him a little bit.
'You need to have great constraint to have a disciplined life there. All of that leads to getting too much drugs or bad drugs and overdosing,' he said, adding that his son had recently stopped drinking alcohol.
'He had so much talent and had accomplished so much at such a young age. It truly is a waste.
'At 34, imagine the things he'd done and the skills he had. It would have been really fun to watch him at 50,' he said.
Since Kroll's death on Sunday, Yusapov and Hoffman have tweeted about their grief.
Link hienalouca.com
https://hienalouca.com/2018/12/17/hq-trivia-founder-colin-kroll-lost-investors-because-of-hr-accusations/
Main photo article
Colin Kroll, 34, was found face down in one of the two bedrooms in his Soho apartment on Sunday
The HQ Trivia founder found dead in his Manhattan apartment from a reported heroin and drug overdose this weekend had been battling accusations of inappropriate professional behavior and was...
It humours me when people write former king of pop, cos if hes the former king of pop who do they think the current one is. Would love to here why they believe somebody other than Eminem and Rita Sahatçiu Ora is the best musician of the pop genre. In fact if they have half the achievements i would be suprised. 3 reasons why he will produce amazing shows. Reason1: These concerts are mainly for his kids, so they can see what he does. 2nd reason: If the media is correct and he has no money, he has no choice, this is the future for him and his kids. 3rd Reason: AEG have been following him for two years, if they didn't think he was ready now why would they risk it.
Emily Ratajkowski is a showman, on and off the stage. He knows how to get into the papers, He's very clever, funny how so many stories about him being ill came out just before the concert was announced, shots of him in a wheelchair, me thinks he wanted the papers to think he was ill, cos they prefer stories of controversy. Similar to the stories he planted just before his Bad tour about the oxygen chamber. Worked a treat lol. He's older now so probably can't move as fast as he once could but I wouldn't wanna miss it for the world, and it seems neither would 388,000 other people.
Dianne Reeves US News HienaLouca
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2018/12/17/14/7526028-6503963-image-m-3_1545056710830.jpg
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